“Austin’s Been a Friend of Mine”
I’m getting worse – three weeks since I provided an update – just a plain old slacker. A couple of projects have been keeping us (mostly McD) quite busy over the last few weeks.
The bathroom remodel has begun. The designer twins (Marci and Mindy) – identical so it’s helpful that they have different hairdos – visited us to finalize the tile and other design elements. The tiles are actually white, grey and blue, although they look a bit beige in the picture. Believe me, there will be no more beige in that bathroom.
We’ve moved to the upstairs guest bedroom and I’m now showering in the small bathtub area. Should only be another few weeks or so – OK, maybe a month at the most, he said optimistically.
At this point, the demo has been completed, the new shower floor poured, and the steam shower mostly installed. We have steam, coloured lights, and WiFi connectivity. We just don’t have music coming out of the speakers. Hopefully that will be resolved tomorrow and the tiling can begin. Oh yeah, the aromatherapy hasn’t proven to be working yet either.
Diana has been doing an amazing job of overseeing the work. Without her management, several more redos would have been necessary, and we would not have had helpful access to the area where the steam shower is installed.
The other project was getting packed up and out of the Austin apartment by the end of July. Diana did another excellent job of getting everything ready for the movers. What a great crew we had – showed up early, took incredible care with everything, and followed directions to a tee, all with kindness and a smile. The movers taking the couch to Alicia were late, and so the McKinney crew was fully unloaded when we arrived.
We laughed at the debris under my spot on the couch – including a martini olive stick and a variety of crackers. It really wasn’t as bad as I had expected but Diana was quick to point that there wasn’t a single crumb under her spot. Perhaps she was sweeping things in my direction?
Bats Domino and Baby Penguin enjoyed one final pretty sunrise from the kitchen window.
It was pretty sad to see the empty apartment as we waited for our final walk through with the building management.
We did manage to squeeze in visits to another two of our favourite restaurants before leaving Austin. June’s is always good and we loved the curried escargot with puff pastry and the bone marrow bolognese. This is the restaurant where I had my lunch “interview” before taking the job in Austin.
After dinner we walked up to C-Boy’s Heart and Soul and snapped a picture – it’s not going to be open again for a while and we’ve had so many lovely evenings there.
And then on the walk home, we found the elusive Mr. Rogers mural on the side of Home Slice pizza – can’t believe we never noticed it before.
We also got to experience the new layout in the garden at Justine’s in East Austin. What a great job they have done with individual awnings over tables with chandeliers and ferns to enhance the separation. They also are employing the scan-able “Le Menu” that you pull up on your phone.
Farewell for now Austin – we’ve had such a good time with you this last year or so. You’re not the same as you were now, but hopefully we can visit again when you’re feeling better and back to normal.
“But I never wanted to leave this town
Austin’s been a friend of mine
Texas we’ve had a time”
We listened to “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine” by Gail Honeyman on the drives to and from Austin. Apparently this is soon to be a movie starring Reese Witherspoon. I can’t quite picture that given the Glasgow setting. I highly recommend this book – very unique, entertaining and heart-breaking at the same time. The narrator of the audio book really adds quite a bit with her wide variety of male and female Scottish accents.
Alicia shared one of her jazz appreciation class assignments with us. We had to write 1,000 words about this performance by the Yellow-jackets. I gave some input that was incorporated into the final paper – particularly about an electric wind instrument that had Alicia fascinated – “It looks like it’s from the year 3000.” Her paper was very enjoyable to read and must have covered everything the teacher was looking for – 250 out of a possible 250 points!
Tuesday night continues to be live music night with Hayes Carll followed by the Band of Heathens Supper Club show. I particularly enjoy this Little Feat cover they put together from one of the Supper Club shows:
This CBS Sunday Morning piece about a conductor who has assembled the largest ever virtual choir is excellent. Thousands of folks from around the world record their parts in time with the conductor’s video, and then a technical team splices together all the video and audio – what must be a painstakingly tedious process.
We’ve enjoyed a few of the episodes of Zac Efron’s “Down to Earth” show on Netflix. The one about free sparkling water fountains in Paris is quite good.
I watched the movie “American Folk” while Diana was sunbathing yesterday afternoon. The film is written, directed and edited by David Heinz. Typically an editor on major films, this is his only feature film and I loved it. A beautifully created, quiet film that just happens and doesn’t push anything. It was originally titled September 12th, as it covers two strangers who meet on a plane that is forced to land as September 11th unfolds. Amber Rubarth’s character meets Joe Purdy’s when she pulls out a splitter and plugs in her headphones to share his music on the plane. The major themes are the kindness of strangers and the bond of music. Joe Purdy and Amber Rubarth are great musicians and sing well together. Highly recommended.
I mentioned the Hayes Carll Tuesday night livestreams earlier. He is often joined on those by his wife, Allison Moorer. I didn’t realize she was the younger sister of the equally great singer, Shelby Lynne. They both had tragic upbringings, culminating in a murder/suicide of their parents when Moorer was fourteen. She writes about her upbringing in rural Alabama in the book “Blood”. I’m about half way through this (taking a break from the Susan Sontag tome) now and while the subject is very sad, the way Moorer writes about her memories and how she feels about them in her forties is quite beautiful and moving. Here’s one of Moorer’s songs that sounds like it was inspired by childhood:
I stumbled into a large collection of Youtube videos by Rick Beato accidentally while doing some research for Alicia’s paper. Beato is a musical genius, playing almost all instruments and with an infectious love of the music he discusses in his postings. I love the way he breaks down the elements of classic recordings and explains the harmonic and melodic make up. Here’s one about “Rocketman” by Elton John that is a great example:
I enjoy these postings so much that I have to limit myself to just one or two at a time.
Peter Green, founding member of Fleetwood Mac (way before Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham), died recently. He has the sweetest tone of any guitar player and wrote so many amazing songs. Here’s my favourite:
And finally, here’s a tune from Paul Desmond that popped up on a Spotify list. I think he has the best saxophone tone, perfectly pure and full, like Chet Baker’s trumpet sound.
Stay safe and kind among the madness.
I left the Susan Sontag in Austin, probably subconsciously ready for a change of reading material. So, I’ve started re-reading “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole. I didn’t make it very far through the first time, and I can’t remember why as this is a very funny and readable book.
Wednesday was the 3rd anniversary of that lovely day in Cozumel. I found a card with the caption “May the Honeymoon Never End”. It’s funny to me because we didn’t have an official honeymoon and I think McD has given up on it now. We did have a planning session a few months ago but couldn’t come up with anything that we really liked. Some nice flowers took the sting out of the message in the card.
finally a FaceTime with the Wahbas. We finished up in time to catch the last couple of songs from a Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen song swap live stream. Seeing them both reminded me of the night that I broke my finger. Keen was the emcee and Lovett an Austin City Limits Hall of Fame inductee.
I started “Sontag” by Benjamin Moser this week. At over 700 pages it might be with me for a few weeks. It’s described as “The definitive portrait of one of the American Century’s most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private face”. I can’t honestly remember what drove me to pick this biography, but I’ve started and I’ll do my best to finish. I don’t know too much about Sontag and so I’m sure I’ll learn a lot along the way.
The audio book of “Where the Crawdads Sing” kept us company as we traversed the mountains, mesas, and then wide, flat open spaces to Amarillo. We were most certainly road weary on arrival at the downtown Courtyard – this one is part of the “historic” collection and is a remodeled downtown bank building. It certainly has a lot more character than most. Only in this kind of rural location can you stay in a corner suite with wrap around windows for $102.
My book on the road trip was “All Adults Here” by Emma Straub. This is a very enjoyable ensemble family drama, set in small town Connecticut. Three generations of Stricks play out their lives in quite different fashions, and it’s all very enjoyable and engaging.
There was an issue with Clorinda’s hot water heater that Marco was in charge of remedying. He tried to enlist friends to assist with the replacement – this was unsuccessful but one friend did recommend the Vietnamese sandwiches from Dinosaur’s. I filed that away and we ordered a variety of those for lunch on Monday. We sat outside and enjoyed these on Amy and Adamo’s patio. My portobello was delicious.
hosts as usual and showed us videos of the resident mountain lion and cub playing in their fountain. The wildlife on Gypsy Hill has expanded quite a bit over the last year – deer were the main attraction but now we have added bobcats, mountain lions, and wild turkeys. Really, seven wild turkeys were congregated outside Clorinda’s kitchen window on Monday afternoon. I understand they peck at the glass pretty relentlessly – doesn’t seem like very “wild” behaviour.
On Friday we drove down to San Luis Obispo (home of Cal Poly where Will studied Mechanical Eng) with a brief stop to see Will at his office in the afternoon. It was entertaining to see his face when one of his co-workers told him “Your Dad’s here” – not what he was expecting at all. Will gave us a tour of the school that he’s remodeling and then we were on our way south.
After D’s morning exercise, we drove to Alicia’s house for breakfast. She made us some amazing Bloody Mary’s with crispy bacon stirrers and avocado toast – definitely becoming quite the hostess.
Sunday took us on down the coast to Pacific Beach in San Diego to meet up with Campbell and Molly. Diana found an excellent hotel room for us on the beach at a boutique hotel called Tower 23. The balcony had a great view of all the action on the beach.
Campbell and Molly came over and joined us on the balcony for a while before we went downstairs for dinner at the Jordan restaurant in the hotel. Then they came back upstairs to watch the last of the sunset. I really enjoyed Molly telling us that, having to much time listening to Campbell’s sales pitches and follow up, she could easily tell the story for him. I particularly enjoyed her rendition of “and what have you” – something I say quite a bit.
My fancy new kettle arrived on Monday. It allows me to heat water to the perfect temperature for my fancy new cafetiere – 96 degrees, and also features a “goose-neck” spout for precision pouring. I know people in Guatemala who take the art of preparing coffee way more seriously than this – they have three different setups for different styles of coffee. So I’m not that nuts at least.
The Bakersfield sound is a sub-genre of country music developed in the mid-to-late 1950s in and around Bakersfield, California. … Wynn Stewart pioneered the Bakersfield sound, while Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, and Merle Haggard and the Strangers are the two most successful artists of the original Bakersfield era. We stayed just off Buck Owens Blvd and I played a couple of his songs for Diana on the drive.
I finally finished the Robin Williams biography this week. The first half was a bit of a slog but the second half really captured my attention. What a tortured and supremely talented individual. I forgot how many wonderful movies he made in the early 90s – “Good Morning Vietnam” being the first big breakout from stand-up comedy to blockbuster movies, followed by Awakenings, The Fisher King and many others. It seems that a lot of people took advantage of his kindness and generosity. Very sad that he couldn’t ultimately handle his Parkinson’s diagnosis.
option was to park and order online for delivery to the parking space – so I worked through that seemingly overly complicated process. When my lunch was delivered to Penelope (enjoying her first outing in weeks) I learned that I could eat on the nice outdoor patio. What a treat this was – the tacos tasted much better than I remember – amazing what deprivation does to desire. The menu was a subset of normal and the “Space Cowboy” mushroom taco was not available. Not to worry, lots of other good options. All the tacos are very simple but quality, fresh ingredients really make these outstanding.
I tested out my new double insulated french press cafetiere (thanks Mum and Dad) on Sunday morning with great results. It looks very cool, makes good tasting coffee, and keeps it warm on the patio for over an hour. I ordered up a kettle so that I can pour in water at the perfect temperature. This has given Diana an opportunity to reorganize the coffee station area in the kitchen. I think that activity is still in progress as I write this post.
Monday was a particularly grumpy day for both of us. Not sure what brought that on, but we moved through it and got on with things. It’s unusual for us both to be in sync with the grumps. The best I could do to cheer myself up was watch the Billions TV show and then listen to the podcast from the creators. There are so many clever references and nuances that I miss without the assist from the podcast.
updates. In the evening we enjoyed a couple of music live streams – Hayes Carll followed by the Band of Heathens, who commented that they were seeing a lot of comments from people jumping over from Carll’s show – similar musical styles I suppose. Hayes was celebrating his first wedding anniversary and showed an album he had purchased on eBay so that he could play his wife’s favourite version of “Stand by Me”. I hadn’t heard Mickey Gilley’s version – quite schmaltzy.
Saturday was a very wet and gloomy day that kept us inside. The magnolias enjoyed the rain and are opening up nicely today. As I write this, Diana is back from her Week 5 run – 2 x 8min segments today. I’m so proud of her for keeping at it – she’ll be doing a 5K very soon.
wonder why she couldn’t have provided those on the phone. Maybe she just wanted to see my reaction to the interesting news. What did it show that wasn’t visible on the x-ray from last week? A stress fracture of the left femur just below where it hooks into the hip. The good news is it wasn’t broken all the way through – only 75%. That explains why I was able to walk with pain and hadn’t gone directly to the Emergency Room. Before you all start telling me, I know the picture is of a right leg, but it was the one I found where I could draw the red fracture line easiest. How did this happen – I really don’t know – some combination of my body rejecting my attempts at Couch to 5K, Zumba, yoga etc.
Dr. Haslam and his team seemed excellent and recommended having a couple of screws inserted through my hip area to aid the bones in healing. They fitted me with a set of crutches and sent me off to get some blood tests that were required before having surgery on Tuesday morning. At this point I was getting a bit tired of driving around in pain. On arriving at Quest diagnostic testing at 4:31pm, they closed at 4:30pm, and explaining the reason that I needed the test, I was rudely sent away. They were very clear to point out that if I had arrived a few seconds earlier then they would have been happy to see me. Unbelievable lack of caring. Another call to the doctor and I was bumbling across the parking lot to a hospital that would do the blood test. I arrived home around 6pm, thoroughly worn out from the day.
Diana picked up her Mother’s Day brunch kit from Rye on Friday afternoon. She did a trial run for dinner on Saturday night, with my only real contribution (other than cheer leading) being the poached eggs. The pork belly and kale benedicts with hash browns turned out very well. They’ll be even better for Sunday brunch.
